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I am sad to see him leave but he deserves this chance. He is going to a team that has their big's now needs to fill in the wing players. He was so instrumental in the making of Westbrook. I wish him the best and it looks like they have a brighter future ahead.

I thought Maurice was a very good lead assistant. Helped establish the culture and certainly helped the players and is just a very good human being. I didn't think Cheeks would get another shot at a head job considering how many coaches with better records are out of work. Detroit is not an ideal situation, but there are worse.

It seems like there is a growing number of successful coaches that are pricing themselves out of jobs and sitting on the sideline at this point.

For OKC, the loss of Cheeks weakens the coaching staff, but it also brings opportunity to get a lead assistant that potentially can assist Brooks with some weaker parts of his skill set. It will be interesting to see which direction they go in filling the position.

I'm wondering if some of detroit's interest was due to Brandon knight, the kid has talent and is a hard worker so it would make sense to bring someone in who could develop him for a couple of seasons before they worry too much about record.

spearsy23 wrote:I'm wondering if some of detroit's interest was due to Brandon knight, the kid has talent and is a hard worker so it would make sense to bring someone in who could develop him for a couple of seasons before they worry too much about record.

I agree with this, but also think that they were looking for a coach that could connect with all of their players. Think about when Brooks replaced Carleisimo. Brooks wasn't a better coach, but he connected better with the players and they worked hard and played hard and improved. If I was a gm or owner I'd want a similar coach if I believed I had some talent and was concerned about development. We see talented players go undeveloped all of the time.